


Norway Discovers Nightcore and Ruins Everything

by pyrrhocorax (mniotilta)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Crack, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 16:53:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6292429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mniotilta/pseuds/pyrrhocorax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Two things to know before reading this to explain why I decided to write this:</p>
<p>1. I love nightcore. I love it unironically so much so that it’s an in-joke among my friend group. “Isn’t nightcore basically songs sped up at a higher pitch?” Originally no, but colloquially that’s what it’s become. In either form, I love it, because I love flailing my body around rapidly at high speeds and dancing badly alone in my room and/or in public when nobody is around. Nightcore gets me in the Zone.</p>
<p>2. I recently discovered that nightcore was invented by Norwegians.</p>
<p>This is semi-OOC I guess and not serious at all but I don’t care. I wrote this in like 30 minutes.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Norway Discovers Nightcore and Ruins Everything

**Author's Note:**

> Two things to know before reading this to explain why I decided to write this:
> 
> 1\. I love nightcore. I love it unironically so much so that it’s an in-joke among my friend group. “Isn’t nightcore basically songs sped up at a higher pitch?” Originally no, but colloquially that’s what it’s become. In either form, I love it, because I love flailing my body around rapidly at high speeds and dancing badly alone in my room and/or in public when nobody is around. Nightcore gets me in the Zone.
> 
> 2\. I recently discovered that nightcore was invented by Norwegians.
> 
> This is semi-OOC I guess and not serious at all but I don’t care. I wrote this in like 30 minutes.

It began with Norway driving Iceland to the airport.  
  
“ _Do you ever feel_ —,” the radio crackled.  
  
“Yes,” Norway said in response.  
  
“— _like a plastic bag_?”  
  
“ Yes!” a bit louder and exasperated.  
  
“That’s enough!” Iceland groaned, reaching over to change the song. “I will not have you talking alongside Katy Perry the entire way.”  
  
“She’s asking you a question, it’s only fair that you answer.”  
  
“She can’t hear you!”  
  
“You don’t know that.”  
  
A muffled “whatever” is quickly hushed by the sound of a happy beat. A happy beat that’s all too familiar, with higher vocals and a quicker tempo.  
  
“Is this Lady Gaga, but faster?”  
  
“It’s called nightcore,” Iceland shrugged. “I’m surprised you’ve never heard of it, it originated in Norway.”  
  
He was hooked.

* * *

It began innocently enough, with a google search when Norway came back from dropping him off. Youtube returned him with pages and pages of nightcore remixes, each video with a overly cute anime girl slapped across the cover. All the popular songs of this era had been nightcored, he could barely find a single one not made more danceable. He researched the genre’s origins, pouring himself an eighth cup of coffee at four in the morning, and delved into Nightcore’s humble beginnings as a two man band. Why had he not hear of this? Why, only now, was nighcore, the purest form of music, entering his life?  
  
It was like being touched by the graces of god, listening to these groovy tunes.  
  
He kept on listening to the core all night long.

* * *

“Norway?” Denmark knocked at his door three days later. “We haven’t heard from you, are you okay? It doesn’t look like you got your mail, either? Can I come in? Are you home?” No answers can’t possibly be good answers, so Denmark did the natural thing and broke in through one of the windows. Glass splintered all over the floor.  
  
“Nor?” He shouted again, climbing in through the broken frame.  
  
Norway, on his desk surrounded by coffee cups stacked dangerously atop each other, was asleep, but a ten hour long nightcore video was still singing through his speakers.  
  
He had stayed up for three days with this beautiful piece of art and Norway would forever be different.

* * *

At first, nothing was that odd. Norway insisted on playing nightcore versions of songs everywhere he went, frowning when the originals were played, and everyone was perfectly adaptable around him. If Norway wanted to listen to nightcore, Sweden would allow it without protest. If Norway asked if Finland could speed his metal songs faster, Finland would do it. They loved Norway, and if he was this enthusiastic about something for once in his life, they would support it as much as possible.  
  
But when his birthday rolled around, when they all gathered around on May 15th, they realized it maybe had gone too far.  
  
“Sing happy birthday,” Norway said, “but sing it in nightcore.”  
  
Cue four people trying to replicate the higher pitch and faster tempo of nightcore naturally in the weirdest sounding birthday song ever to exist.

* * *

Every song became nightcored. It didn’t matter if the song was an acceptable candidate to be nightcored or not, the deed was done. Norway had paid Estonia quite a bit of money to build an app on his phone to instantly nightcore anything his phone could pick up. With headphones in and the app running, Norway listened to the entire world in nightcore.  
  
The plus of this was Norway was less lethargic, he moved faster, did things faster, seemed more peppy, but that was only because the world seemed to be moving at a quicker speed to him. But he wasn’t the Norway that the Nordics had known, and while they would accept him if he changed, all of this didn’t seem right. Norway started nightcoring songs that were already nightcored until they evolved into high pitched screeching. This was enough. Something had to be done.  
  
“Norway,” Finland broke it to him gently, taking the headphones off his ears and pulling the phone away from his hands. “Do you need help? We’re concerned nightcore is having a negative effect on your life.”  
  
There was silence. Norway put his hands over his ears, then drew them down to look at them. He turned to Finland, blankly.  
  
“What are you saying? You aren’t nightcore. I can’t understand you.”

* * *

Without his phone, Norway found an old dusty tape recorder and started using it to make makeshift nightcore around him. He was desperate, frantic, recording the words spoken to him and replaying them faster. It wasn’t the same. The core of the night was taken from him. This was the worst thing to ever happen in his life.  
  
“This is my fault,” Iceland lamented, “I should have let him talk to Katy Perry instead of introducing him to nightcore.”  
  
“You didn’t know this was gonna happen,” Denmark said, drumming his fingers on the kitchen table. “It’s not your fault. Nor is just Nor.”  
  
“But we can’t leave ‘im like this. What if the entire nation of Norway starts behavin’ at a different speed than the rest of the world because of him? Think of the speed violations...” Sweden sighed.  
  
“I don’t think anyone wants Nightcoreway to be a country,” Finland nodded.  
  
Right on cue, the nation who had decided to start calling himself Nightcoreway burst into the room.  
  
“I declare war!” Nightcoreway said quickly, at a higher tinge than his normal voice, wearing a t-shirt with a generic anime girl on it. “You took the nightcore away and I will battle you to get it back.”  
  
“I don’t think you can actually battle over nightcore.”  
  
“No,” he squeaked, “not a normal war. A dance marathon. Winner take all. You win, I give up nightcore for good. I win, you also become one with nightcore.”  
  
It was the only choice they had.

* * *

Four versus one. Hours of nightcore. Constant dancing until only one stood.  
  
“I got this,” Denmark grinned, rolling up his sleeves, “this will be easy!”  
  
Three hours later, he was singing a different tune.  
  
“The songs,” he panted while jabbing his legs in different directions,” they are, so, fast! Nightcore has made him so much stronger!”  
  
He gestured to Nightcoreway, who was twirling glowsticks in their dark basement and hopping back and forth, hardly breaking a sweat.  
  
Denmark only lasted until hour five before he finally collapsed.

* * *

Hour ten, Sweden also fell, leaving the determined Finland chopping his arms in the air and melancholic Iceland shuffling in the corner.  
  
“We can do this, Ice!” Finland kicked, “come on, keep your spirits up!”  
  
“Just look at him, he’s still going!”  
  
Nighcoreway carefully did a backflip, flinging his glowsticks in the air and catching him. He looked tired, but he had the glint in his eyes of someone who wouldn’t give up. He was determined to turn the Nordic 5 into the Nightcore 5.  
  
“Nightmark and Swecore have both fallen,” Nightcoreway said, “soon you will too.”  
  
“No way!” Finland hopped on one foot in anger, a fatal mistake, as his leg gave out and he toppled to the floor.  
  
“Such strong last words, Coreland,” Nightcoreway smirked. Coreland gasped in true terror.  
  
“I’ve _HAD_ it with this!” Iceland screamed from the corner, emerging from the shadows while still shuffling, sweat drenching his pale hair. “This is just ridiculous! I’m not going to become Icecore, or Nightland, or whatever! I’m ending this now!”  
  
“You think _you_ can outlast me?”  
  
“Of course!” Iceland threw his arms outward, then gestured to himself. “Who do you think introduced you to nightcore to begin with!?” He danced over to the computer that was playing the endless nightcore, typed in a song, and turned intensely in the direction of Nightcoreway, jabbing his thumb down.  
  
“You’re going _down_.”  
  
“We’ll see about that.”  
  
As the song started, Iceland started dancing harder than he ever had, singing along to the lyrics and doing dance moves that nobody thought he was capable of doing, sensually moving his hips to the beat of the song and his voice cracking as he failed to be able to reach the high notes of the song, but belting out the chorus as best he could anyway.  
  
It was a sight that Nightcoreway could only gawk at in awe and confusion.  
  
“You stopped dancing!” Iceland panted as the song came to an end, still jigging. “I won!”  
  
Nightcoreway looked down. He had indeed stopped at the sight of his brother becoming the spirit of nightcore. He was Norway once again. He threw down his glowsticks, tore the anime girl shirt off his body, and went to hug his brother.  
  
“Nor, get off of me, you’re so sweaty!”

* * *

The curse of nightcore was lifted, Norway swore he would not let it take over his life again, deleting the app and clearing his playlists of nightcored songs. All was normal, temporarily.  
  
Until three weeks later, when Iceland discovered vaporwave.

**Author's Note:**

> I might write the Iceland and vaporwave thing later idk.


End file.
